The volume of deliveries from negotiated sales has dropped fairly sharply in the last couple of weeks. Last week, negotiated sales were 78 percent of a year ago. Two weeks ago, they were just 65 percent of a year ago. Total deliveries have not fallen by that much. Deliveries of formula and forward contract cattle have been generally close to even with year-ago levels - except for two weeks ago when they were about 14 percent higher. Overall, delivery volumes for the last couple of weeks have been down by 10 percent to 12 percent year-over-year. This has actually been fairly consistent for about the past month. 

Certainly over the last couple of weeks, the incentive to market cattle aggressively has diminished as fed cattle prices have faded. But the decline in price over the past two weeks has not been the only reason to be a bit more harder-nosed. Corn prices have declined steadily since early November. Omaha cash corn last week was reported at $5.78 per bushel, a decline of more than 10 percent since early November and -- perhaps more significantly -- its lowest level since the very first week of 2011. Finally, as high as fed cattle prices have been this fall, feeder cattle prices have been, proportionally, even higher. The prospect of re-filling pens with $140-plus feeder steers (or $170-plus stockers in the absence of those feeders) has surely given feedlot managers a lot to think about this fall.

The preceding conversation notwithstanding, Cattle on Feed numbers have yet to show much slowdown in marketings. In last week's report, November marketings were down by just a fraction of a percent from a year ago. This was well to the high side of pre-report expectations. Placements, which had slowed down since July to track very closely with year-ago levels, were up by 4 percent -- just a bit over even the highest pre-report. The total on-feed number was also up 4 percent, which was basically in-line with the pre-reports. Overall, the report looked a tad bearish, but Monday's market seemed to ignore it in favor of more exciting winter weather news. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see, first, how marketings hold up in the December report and, second, how far into the New Year placements can hold up against tight feeder cattle numbers and a growing interest in herd expansion that will ultimately hold heifers off of the market.

Since I have the honor of penning this pre-Christmas newsletter, I would like to take advantage of the opportunity on behalf of myself and my co-authors to wish all of our readers a Merry Christmas. And just in case next week's newsletter gets lost in the Holiday shuffle: Happy New Year, too.